Interviews

1. Her early memories before the war

2. Learning English

3. Taking her father’s ashes, going back to Japan, learning the koto and culture

4. Sensing the war was coming

5. Coming back to America from Japan before the war

6. Working at the family flower shop, meeting Greta Garbo

7. Her experience of Japanese American Evacuation

8. Memories of Manzanar

9. Working in the camp hospital

10. Wind in camp

11. Her grandfather and Dr. Thompson

12. Her grandmother comes to Manzanar

13. Experiencing prejudice after the war

Sumiko Kozawa

(1916-2016) Florist

Coming back to America from Japan before the war

After I got back, I got to go to work again with my mother. And then the FBI come. They think I was hiding something, that was something else. I said, “Look for yourself.” I have nothing to hide, you know.

I was in Japan yeah. They thought I could be a spy or something. They looked little cellar and little house. In those days my mother used to make daikon no tsukemono in the big taru there. They used to tip that thing over. All that hard work there. I mean, they did everything that was wrong.

They thought we were hiding that thing or signaling. Look for yourself. Nothing like that. So they go under the basement, under the cellar and find barrel of daikon no tsukemono and that’s it. There’s nothing to hide.

World War II

Date: May 24, 2011

Location: California, US

Interviewer: John Esaki

Contributed by: Watase Media Arts Center, Japanese American National Museum

Interviewee Bio

Sumiko Kozawa was born in 1916 in Los Angeles. The oldest of five children, Sumi spent three years in Japan before World War II, learning koto, flower arranging, and tea ceremony. Her family’s flower shop, Tokio Florist in Silver Lake, was popular with the Hollywood community because of its fresh flowers and reasonable prices. Sumi not only helped out, but also had the opportunity to meet many people, including famous silent movie star, Greta Garbo. When Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, Sumi and her family were sent to Manzanar. There she helped care for the family, taking care of her grandfather and younger sister. She passed away on December 2016, at age 100. (December 2016)